US counter-terrorism efforts increasingly focusing on Africa

However, he said, "ship owners regularly get calls from people demanding 'taxes' the day after any ship arrives in a Somali port, with these people knowing exactly the amount and kind of goods that have arrived. Al- Shabaab has people inside, everywhere."

In an online briefing with selected journalists including this Al Majalla reporter in early March, AFRICOM commander Gen. Michael E. Langley noted in relation to a recent US shipment of 61 tons of military aid for Somali forces that it was primarily "small-caliber weapons.  Actually, the AK-47 Barretts and ammunition."

Cautiously optimistic

Gen. Langley, who took on AFRICOM command last August, added in the online briefing that, after meeting with the Somali leader, he was "very cautiously optimistic on how they're progressing in their campaigning across and buying in, having the federal member states buy into" the president's campaign to improve the situation in the country." 

"This not only includes just clearing the regions and pulling the clans into the favour – into the overall vision of Somalia, but also the continuing action he does after that".

Al-Shabaab has reportedly been trying in recent weeks to boost public support, including by attempting to deal with issues that the local population claim the local government is not doing enough to counter.

The local media outlet Somali Guardian reported in early March that "Al-Qaeda-aligned al-Shabaab militants began night patrols in some of the districts of the capital Mogadishu in an intensifying anti-drugs swoop."

"The armed men warned them that they would be killed if caught using drugs, weeks after al-Shabaab military spokesman Abu Musab announced that they would launch anti-drug operations in Mogadishu after receiving complaints from residents."

The Somali logistics specialist told Al Majalla, however, that when "crops are still underground, people from al-Shabaab come and demand three years of zakat [a religious 'tax'] in advance", and that this has angered the local population.

He also noted that al-Shabaab had, in recent years, lost territory it used to hold in the outskirts of the Somali capital Mogadishu and that it is now mostly "invisible" but still able to conduct attacks "everywhere".

However, many strides against the group have been made, he said. For example, "Al Shabaab used to get supplies from Yemen but that supply line has been cut too."

Meanwhile, other internal conflicts in the area are also having a destabilising effect. In late March, US-trained former Somali special forces commander Mohamed Adan Suleiman was reportedly killed in a fighting in the town of Lasanod, where troops from the semi-autonomous Somaliland are fighting against local forces that say they are seeking a reunification with Somalia.

Links to West African jihadist groups

Speaking to Al Majalla, the Somali logistics expert added that there are financial and ideological links between al-Shabaab in the Horn of Africa and jihadist factions operating on the other side of the continent, in West Africa.

The AFRICOM spokesperson noted in response to Al Majalla questions in early March that "JNIM is expanding in the Sahel. Islamic State West Africa Province is consolidating after displacing Boko Haram near the Lake Chad basin."

Jama'at Nusrat al Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM) is a coalition of militant al-Qaeda-aligned Islamist groups with leaders representing Tuareg, Fulani, and Arab jihadists from the Sahel and Maghreb. JNIM announced its existence in March 2017 and regularly claims responsibility for attacks throughout Mali and neighbouring countries.  

The leader of one of the JNIM groups is Amadou Koufa, who in 2019 reappeared in a video months after the authorities claimed he had been killed in a raid by French forces.

"Koufa is believed to have been radicalised via contacts with Pakistani preachers from the Dawa sect in the 2000s," according to a 2020 report by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies.

"To rally support, Koufa tapped into local grievances harboured by Fulani pastoralists," the report added, similar to how al-Shabaab has gained support in many areas of East Africa.

In Burkina Faso, which alongside Mali is the area where JNIM operates the most in, an attack on March 22 in the northern part of the country reportedly killed at least 15 Burkina Faso soldiers and auxiliaries. 

Added layer of complexity 

The situation is rendered more complex for any sort of Western military intervention and/or support for local forces and governments by the growing involvement of Russia's mercenary Wagner Group in multiple countries across the continent.

"With regards to the presence of Wagner in Africa, the US does not view our partnership with Africa as a zero-sum game," the AFRICOM spokesperson stressed to Al Majalla.

"We do not force them to choose between us and other strategic competitors. A main concern of many of our partners in Africa is terrorism and they ask us for help solving this challenge," she wrote.

However, "other strategic competitors such as the Kremlin-backed Wagner Group are known for their destabilising activities and human rights abuses. AFRICOM has been watching Wagner Group activities across Africa for several years and we are very concerned about their growing influence and presence acrossthe continent," the spokesperson continued.

Strategic American base

Camp Lemonnier, which is a US Navy installation and the only permanent US military base in Africa, is located in Djibouti in East Africa and "supports approximately 4,000 US, joint and allied forces military and civilian personnel and US Department of Defence contractors," according to a US government website.

Read more: Why do so many foreign powers have military bases in Djibouti?

US Army colonel Tim MacDonald, who between the summer of 2021 and summer of 2022 served as director of operations for Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa at Camp Lemonnier, told Al Majalla in March that "the link between AFRICOM and CENTCOM in the region is critical for situational awareness."

CENTCOM is one of the eleven unified combatant commands of the US Department of Defense and is responsible for a broad area including Middle Eastern countries such as Iraq as well as Afghanistan.

"Additionally," MacDonald, who is now a military fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and who previously served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, said that "Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti offers a strategically important location to continue to monitor threats both in East Africa and beyond".

In response to a question about African nations requiring urgent attention to avoid their becoming breeding grounds for transnational terrorist groups, he noted that: "The civil war in Ethiopia has also potentially set conditions for transnational terrorism to grow in that region."

He stressed that his area of expertise covered East Africa and did not include West African nations, before adding: "The instability brought on by the war and food scarcity are of concern to me. Ethiopia was once a strong partner in the region and I would like to see a path for this to be the case once again."

According to a report released 20 March, there were an estimated 43,000 excess deaths in 2022 in Somalia due to a worsening drought that is hitting south-central parts of the country especially hard, where al- Shabaab has a stronger presence compared with northern areas of the country.